Tracking user data and associating disparate data with particular users has become a multi-billion-dollar industry and is in many ways the foundation of the Internet Age. User data that has been properly associated with a particular user can be highly valuable for many purposes including advertising. For example, different advertisers may wish to target different demographics of potential customers. Additionally, advertisers may also desire to target potential customers who have purchased particular items in the past or participated in particular events, particularly immediately following a live event.
Many different groups and organizations attempt to gather data relating to their customers and/or fans. For example, many bands, sports teams, performers, conventions, and venues now provide fans with custom-built apps. The apps provide fans with opportunities to connect with the artists, athletes, and/or performers that they admire. In turn, the apps provide the artists, athletes, performers, and/or venues with a method for gathering user information about their fans and generating excitement among their fan base.
A particular difficulty, however, exists in associating fans with tickets purchased for an event and engaging those attendees in unique, person-specific ways to enhance the experience of attending an event. Similar difficulties exist when associating fans who are otherwise participating in an event (e.g., watching an event on television) with information about those respective fans. For example, many concert tickets are purchased by large scale ticket resellers. These ticket resellers then sell the concert tickets to the fans. In this arrangement, the ticket resellers may gather data relating to individual fans who purchase the tickets, but this data is generally not passed on to the artists, sports teams, performers, and/or venues that are actually holding the event. Additionally, even this data can be incomplete and unreliable. Associating fans who attend events with user information stored about those fans can provide high quality and extremely valuable advertising data. Accordingly, there are problems within the art to be overcome.